CDC: Untreatable Gonorrhea a Possibility July 7, 2011 -- The CDC is warning that gonorrhea resistant to known antibiotic treatments could soon be a reality in the United States.

A report in Friday’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report highlights gonorrhea's declining susceptibility to cephalosporins, which is the only remaining class of antibiotics available to treat the common sexually transmitted disease (STD).

While cephalosporin treatment failures have not been documented in the U.S., CDC officials say they are seeing “concerning trends” that suggest such failures are not far off.

“We do fear that based on what we are hearing around the world, we will see cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea,” CDC Director of STD Prevention Gail Bolan, MD, tells WebMD. “We don’t know when this is going to happen, but the hope is that we have a few years to identify other treatments.”

Slideshow: Pictures and Facts About STDs